Residents, Officials Dodge Bullet Train

Proposed Routes Would Disturb Animals, Wildlife Managers Say

June 1, 1996|By STEVE LIEWER Staff Writer

Florida Overland eXpress' bullet train won't whoosh through Broward and Palm Beach counties on its way from Miami to Orlando and Tampa until at least 2004, but the train's future path already is stirring controversy.

This week, FOX met with officials of state environmental agencies, the beginning of a yearlong process to come up with a route for the 200-mph train.

Don't expect a smooth ride.

"There are major conflicts along the entire route," said Terrie Bates, regulatory director for the South Florida Water Management District. "It's going to be a major challenge."

Among the biggest problems:

-- Managers of the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge don't want the train running along the levee that separates the refuge from suburbia. They fear it will frighten animals living near the edge of the refuge.

-- West Palm Beach water managers don't want the train running through the city's water catchment area near Okeechobee Boulevard and Florida's Turnpike. West Palm Beach draws its drinking water from the site.

-- West of Boca Raton, planners are trying to find a route in the slender zone between the refuge and the western edge of developments like Bay Winds and Mission Bay.

-- The Everglades snail kite, an endangered wading bird, lives in wetlands north of Weston in southwest Broward County. Water managers don't want the bullet train disturbing its nests.

Planners say it will take at least a year before a route is proposed and public hearings scheduled. Construction won't begin before 1999.

"There's a great deal that has to be studied before any stakes go in the ground," said Joanna Wragg, a FOX spokeswoman. "No one should think this is going to happen soon."

But it will happen, if the Florida Department of Transportation gets its way. The state Legislature has dedicated part of the Transportation Trust Fund, which is drawn from gas-tax revenues, to high-speed rail for 30 years beginning in 1997.

After four months of studying five proposals, DOT in February chose FOX's plan to build a bullet train similar to the high-tech tgv train operating in France. The train would stop in Miami, west Broward County and Riviera Beach, near the Veteran's Administration Hospital.

But FOX's route was the most controversial of the five because it runs along South Florida's western suburbs instead of through the well-developed coastal region. That means it threatens environmentally sensitive land.

"It is going to be a very difficult area to get through, between environmental concerns on the one hand and human concerns on the area," said Jack Heiss, DOT's railway engineering administrator.

Nowhere is the tightrope tighter than west of Boca Raton. FOX's Engineering Manager Claudio Dallavalle said he is looking for a corridor west of subdivisions like Boca Chase, Bay Winds and Mission Bay but east of the wildlife refuge.

He said he has ruled out running the track along U.S. 441 in west Boca because that area is so heavily developed.

But he said it could hug U.S. 441 between Delray Beach and Wellington, in areas that remain mostly rural. The road is scheduled for expansion in the next five years, so workers would disrupt traffic for construction once.

There are alternatives. Dallavalle said FOX might consider running the train in the unpopulated `Glades area of western Palm Beach County.